Is there any reason the slang for ***** should not be used if it is not said with malice?

Question

I know many words that are said like "devil", "old man", "old fart", "wanker", "newfie" where the word in itself may be considered derogatory but the use of the word is understood to be more a term of familiarity or used in a comical fashion. I know someone who is getting punished who has no idea that there is any negativity associated with the word. How can you expect a young person to learn so when so many people who typically are associated with the negative implication of the world use it actively to address each other. I.e. black people. Why do some people feel that N i g and g e r is different than H o n k e y or any other slang word?

Answer 1

Every group of people has some kind of name that derides them or puts them down. You mentioned some of them. These names are not limited just to nationalities and ethnic groups. Even professions have names that put them down a little bit like "pencil pushers" for office clerks, "bean counters" for accountants and "shrinks" or "head-shrinkers" for psychologists. There are a whole host of unflattering words that apply to intellectual-type people: nerd, geek, brainiac, bookworm etc.

The English language is not the only language that has derisive terms for people who are different. All languages have them to a greater or lesser degee. For example, I've read that the Chinese have a term for Russians and Westerners (Caucasians) which means "Big noses," a term for the Japanese which means "Orange heads" (because men in Japan traditionally shaved their heads) and a word for Malayans, which roughly translated means something like "Savages."

Nobody likes being called anything that is derrogatory and such words should never be used in public. In theory, ethnic slur words like honkey, cracker, Kike, Chink , Mick, Biddy, Spik, Wop, greaser etc. are all equally bad as the N-word. However, the N- word probably has the worst connotations because of the kind of history behind it, a terrible one :slavery, a bloody civil war that killed half a million Americans, large-scale lynchings, Jim Crow laws, segregation, chronically high unemployment rates etc.

Other ethnic groups, including working-class Whites (cooks, carpenters, coal miners, railroad workers, Okies, Irish linen workers, Irish famine victims etc), have all gone through hell in history too, most unfortunately, but you just don't have quite the same kind of confluence of tragic events in their history as you do with African-Americans and African Blacks